Arpeggio and the Baby Bunnies

Friday, November 5, 2010

Two blogs, two days, I'm on a roll!

So, it seems that although my NaNoWriMo thing isn't going so well, I'm in a blogging mood. Maybe it's because I find myself with time that I would otherwise be doing other things. Let's forget the fact that I need to change the sheets on my bed, wash clothes, vacuum and mop the kitchen floor. We can also forget the fact that I still feel like poop, and if I try to sleep, my bedroom windows are like portals into the sun itself, and I run the risk of getting sunburn on the back of my eyelids. Not sure why I thought it was a good idea to rearrage my room so the windows were facing me when I try to sleep but there you have it. I don't feel like moving it back because I'd have to get a crane to move the boxes of books UNDER the bed. That is not a job I'm anxious to repeat.

So I figured this time, I'd go on a rampage about my novels. I can't seem to get any of them moving, not sure if it's lack of focus, lack of imagination, or lack of something else, but maybe by writing about them something will pop and I'll come one step closer to finishing one of them.

BUTTERFLY ASSASSIN

Chase is my best bet for actually finishing a novel. I'm getting the plot down finally since I've just been doing what I always do and approaching the whole thing with a willy nilly perspective. I can thank NaNoWriMo for that. I sat down and made an outline, did character bios and finished off the bland work part of an otherwise fun project.

Chase is in general terms an assassin. Some have questioned if that's the appropriate term, since she's a lot of things but in the end, her killing is what finances every other motive so I think that quantifies the title. Yes, it's all about vengeance and justice, so some might say vigilante is a better term, but vigilantes don't get paid. At least I don't think they do. Eventually everyone will learn exactly HOW she gets money to kill the pedophiles she hunts, but I'm not letting that slip right yet.

While most professional assassins depend on their complete lack of physical uniqueness to blend in, Chase goes in the opposite direction. She's got enough metal in her face and body (piercings) to set off airport metal detectors from the parking lot. Seems like an oddity for an assassin, but it's like this: if people define you by something, you take that something away, and the defining aspect is removed. You're no longer noticable, or even remarkable. Someone with pink hair who dyes it brown, could go to the mall and find not one person calls out to them, even their friends.

So going on, you've got Chase, a grown woman who was abducted along with her sister when they were kids. Creep ends up killing her sister, and Chase lives with guilt from a number of reasons most of which the fact that she was angry with Katie (her sister) for constantly crying. Crying that led them to being caught while in the middle of their escape. The fact that Katie died and Chase escaped has never left her any peace and is the reason for the piercings she's consumed with. She can torment herself with the pain of having them done and bring herself a little bit closer to Katie with each new one. Odd way of dealing with guilt maybe, but stranger things have happened.

So fast forward to the present and you've got a woman who has distanced herself from her remaining family and is hell-bent on making sure every pedophile who has ever escaped justice gets it eventually at her own hands. She's set herself up in the "little big town" of Richmond, where she meets Detective Steven MacKenzie. Sexy, gorgeous Irish detective who she dreams about, and deep down inside, knows what she does, but thinks if he doesn't accept it, it's not real.

On the trail of a pedophile that may or may not be a pedophile, Chase drags Stevie in, and they find out that it's not the kind of pedophile they're all used to dealing with, but something much bigger, much badder that will shake the city she lives in to it's core and leave people wondering what went wrong and how they couldn't have seen what was happening.

Chase and Stevie immerse themselves in the crowd of underage party kids and the clubs that cater to them, and in so doing, discover that safety is often disguised as something entirely different. By the time they're neck deep in drama and intrigue, it's too late to back out and neither of them would want to. They'll both risk their lives and their professions to see it all come to an end, and risk the friendship and something else that's been building between them when Stevie is forced to face the fact that Chase is exactly what he'd thought all along and he can no longer hide from the truth.

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I hope that's appropriately vague enough to capture the interest without giving the whole cow away. Chase was inspired by a role play character I created to play with my best friend in New York, although her life is far different from the Chase in the novel. I just fell in love with the character and found that she had started whispering sweet nothings in my mind about how much further I could take her. Maybe one day she'll see the bright lights of a bookstore and you can say you knew her before she was famous!

1 comments:

Whoa!!! It worked! It's allowing me to leave a comment! This is excellent!

Well, no I can finally chat with you about what you are writing!

I know how you feel about getting STUMPED when it comes to your writing, that stand still is so annoying and frustrating. I'm right there with you. However, I think this is cool what your doing. It always help me to write about my story just for fun and to get it out there :)